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Sunshine
Astorias Reginalt "Sunshine" Gracedawn is a former priest of the Church of the Holy Light. The son of a farmer in the Eastweald, he claims that he joined the Church out of necessity, as it was one of the rare paths one could take to become literate and well-studied (though the true course of such history is a secret known only to him). After falling to the Plague in Brill alongside his estranged brother Andronicas, he renounced the Church and embraced the darker tenets of his teachings, adopting his childhood nickname, Sunshine, as a deliberate mockery of the Light that had abandoned him. History Astorias was born to a humble farmer, Ivaras Gracedawn, in the hilly regions of the Eastweald, nearly two decades before the First War. He and his younger brother showed remarkable mental aptitude well beyond their stations in life, but their parents had no capacity to facilitate their academic pursuits. When his father suffered a debilitating illness, Astorias took up the responsibility to watch over his parents, and instructed his brother—a then-prodigious young mage—to travel south to the city of Dalaran. In the following years, Astorias grew more bitter. Already a sullen individual since his childhood, he now longed for an escape from his poverty and the burden of his aging parents. His brother had been accepted as an apprentice in the Kirin Tor, and though he wrote letters regularly (not always easily discernable letters, as Astorias was only partially literate), he never visited. Astorias had wanted his whole life to visit the farther reaches of the world, but that dream slipped further from his fingers with each passing day. He had just about come to the age of manhood when war broke out, far to the southern edge of the Eastern Kingdoms. Soon refugees from Stormwind arrived on the shores of Tirisfal Glades, to the west of Astorias's humble home. The great king Teranas Menethil II had issued a call to arms for all eligible men, to rebuff the encroaching Horde, forming in the same swift motion the new Alliance of Man. Astorias saw his chance to escape and made secret arrangements to join the Lordaeron Army, but his well-intentioned father had other plans. They were both attempting to save the young man's life, yet with far different designs. His father had bribed the local magistrate to list their homestead as childless, asserting that both sons had moved abroad. Simultaneously, the clever, if ailing, old man had contacted the priests in the local branch of the Church of the Holy Light. On the eve of Astorias's departure, Ivaras informed him that he would be pledging himself as an acolyte. "They can teach you what you've always wanted to learn there, son," his father said. "And you'll still be close enough to help us if needed!" The ensuing argument was heard by only three persons, all of whom decided to never again speak of it. Despite his rage, Astorias followed his father's instructions and began to learn the edicts—and magics—of the Church. As he practiced his written word, Astorias would regularly read of Alliance exploits and, alternatively, of his brother's. What once filled him with anger was now his only recourse to imagine a different life, and he accepted it with a grim sort of resignation. He tried in private to forgive his brother for having seemingly abanoned him, and to his parents for having lived so tenaciously. More years passed him by, with few graces beyond his still-fortunately robust hairline and his improved penmanship. In the year 614 KC, around early autumn, Astorias Reginalt Gracedawn died. The tides of fate had turned against the failing kingdom of Lordaeron. The mighty Alliance had almost completely splintered in preceding years, as the high elves withdrew to their city of Silvermoon, followed by the Gilneans and then the Stromgardians. Communication lines broke down across the nation. Mail couriers vanished. Word of mouth spoke of a dark disease festering near the border of Quel'thelas. Even Andronicas's letters, which had normally been delivered by a curious raven, ceased. Save one. "Meet me in Brill, on the 19th of next month." What compelled him to listen is lost even to him, for the Plague of Undeath is as kind to one's memories as it is to all else. But on that day, Astorias arrived. He had taken a horse from the Church stable and fled in the night. With half a mind to hug Andronicas and half a mind to punch him, he waited. His brother was harrowed and slightly frailer than he would have imagined. They exchanged some pleasantries in the tavern before Andronicas gave him a cryptic warning: "You have to leave Lordaeron now. I hoped I would have had better news, but the King did not react as the Kirin Tor had hoped." "Twenty-five years—you left me for nearly twenty-five years—and now you tell me to leave them?" "Well," Andronicas replied, "it seems you were keen on it already, or you wouldn't be here right now, eh, sunshine?" Astorias kept himself from punching his brother as he had imagined. A full-handed backslap was sufficient. He stormed up to his room as his brother called out for him and slammed the door shut. Whether he had succumbed to the Plague overnight, or whether he had merely lost recollection of his own precise death, Astorias never again recalled a living thought. As with others in his soon-to-be-newfound "race", he fell under the control of the fallen crown prince, Arthas Menethil. Many moons passed as he shambled as a member of the Scourge, until at once he did not. He awoke in a graveyard, perhaps placed there by original members of the growing Forsaken, with his similarly dead (though not so similarly aware of the fact) brother at his side. Astorias knew all too well what had happened after a few moments. He could see, yet not in any way he once knew. He could talk, yet the cold wind danced on his open throat. He could feel, yet only pain. He had lived for nearly forty years in ceaseless dedication, and servitude, of others. To his brother, who had left him. To his parents, who had taxed him. To the Church, which had trapped him. To the Light, which had abandoned him. In the year 614 KC, around early autumn, Astorias Reginalt Gracedawn died, and he never came back. The name so many in his past had used to prod and jeer and mock him would be the name he'd use to mock the world. It seemed only fitting to embrace the mockery. And if the Light would see fit to betray him, then turnabout was fair play. He had spent two decades of a wasted life in the service of healing, and three in the service of service. He had a second life, and he would use it as he saw fit. He would see the world after all. The cruel, callous, and unfathomably indifferent world. Moonlight danced above, yet Sunshine touched the grass. Current Events The tales of tomorrow have definitely unfolded for some time, but Sunshine is too lazy to pen them up in a narratively compelling fashion. Alas. Personality Sunshine was always a dour child, yet in undeath his demeanor has turned almost chillingly snide. He's developed a sense of humor of sorts, which typically involves inflicting dark magics on hapless creatures and laughing as they die. His one tether to a willfully forgotten humanity is his quixotic younger brother, who's partially convinced they're still alive and partially convinced they once again can be. They've reconciled with each other out of desperation, and perhaps, if only slightly, a nearly bygone notion of true camaraderie. The other tether, not to his humanity but to his sanity, is his long-realized goal to travel and experience firsthand the history of the world he once only read of. With acknowledgement of the cruel irony that he needed to die in order to live, Sunshine's globetrotting habit brings him closest to the emotion a living human might call joy, though in his approximation it is more a sense of warmth, which forestalls for the briefest moment the unending, soul-twisting torment of undeath. He is always on the march to see new and wild lands and is excited, in some sense of the word, to be "homeless". Appearance Sunshine is somewhat tall for a Forsaken. His hair is greasy and blackish, and his skin has a purple-blue pallor. As like many others who were laid to rest before reawakening as Scourge, he is marked with Lordaeron burial brands. His jaw decayed away many months before he broke free of the Lich King's grasp, as did much of his flesh. He's slightly more skeletal than other Forsaken, and he typically wears dark robes. He's carved elaborate black sigils into his exposed bones, though they appear to have no meaningful purpose or power. Trivia *Sunshine's favorite food, both in life and undeath, is pickled fish (particularly herring), and he is fortunate that it remains one of the few foods potent enough for a Forsaken to easily taste. *Sunshine has a collection of his brother's letters, which he meticuously preserved and kept in a box hidden beneath the floorboards of their farmhouse. He wants to return to the Eastweald—now known as the Western Plaguelands—to retrieve those letters, though he hasn't told anyone of them, including Andronicas. *Sunshine can be reached at Discord with the handle GrantAmadeus#2159. Category:Characters Category:Horde Category:Forsaken Category:Priest Category:The Harbingers